I have been thinking about witches. It’s not surprising considering all this talk of witch hunts. Is there a season when that’s legal?

Witches can be useful. Consider Macbeth, a fictional Scottish king with an abbreviated administration who got the idea with a non-election projection from three hags that he could be a sovereign.

Now who might be cast to stir the pots for spells? Each of the witches spells better than the current bigly king. Let’s call them Kellyanne, Sarah and Jeanine. They are immersed in a world where “fair is foul and foul is fair.” These three charmers provided counsel the king would eagerly employ: “Be lion-mettled, proud, and take no care who chafes, who frets, or who conspirers are.”

Then there is talk of being vanquished when trees get mobile and the weird sisters are right to predict a correction to a terrible wrong. Great Birnam Wood may indeed “unfix his earthbound root” and our other “high-placed Macbeth shall live the lease of nature, pay his breath to time and mortal custom.”

“Something wicked this way comes” — and goes.

Robert Jordan

Waterford